Chapter 251: Time... Ticks (4)
The moment an expert gave the order to search for Sunya, the Goddess of the Eternal Hour, everything started snowballing like a mass rolling down a mountain.
From then on, it could be said that a bounty spanning all existence had been declared for her, yet no matter how deeply anyone dug into the prophesied words that foretold her rise, or followed the threads of Fate and kindred mysteries, she remained elusive.
Even so, curiosity, ambition, and fear turned every gaze toward the hunt, and what would happen once she was found was still anyone’s guess, hanging in the air like a tale that had not yet chosen its ending.
----
Deep below the bustling commotion above, yet hovering just beyond the minor existence inhabited by Akasha, within the mythical bubble gently perched atop the vibrant and colorful realm below.
Inside lay the familiar realm—a sprawling expanse of flowers beneath a mythical, ever-shifting sky.
In this extraordinary place lived a very overpowered... mommy, her presence as much a part of the landscape as the blooms themselves.
Right now, she was curled up on a couch placed in the heart of the field, a faint, unguarded smile playing on her lips.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the sky, watching as the first hints of a ripple effect began to unfold.
Beside her sat Aethea, pale-skinned, with jet-black hair and eyes, a black infinity symbol inked beneath her left eye, and faint feathers that seemed to cling to the calm, unshaken composure she wore.
One leg was casually crossed over the other, her hands resting motionless in her lap.
In that moment, though she would never openly admit it, she had started to feel a certain fondness for Akasha, the very person Akashi so often kept her eyes on.
"Finally... the time is near," Akashi said, her smile breaking through without the slightest effort to hide it.
"When I finally get to hold my baby boy."
Aethea’s mouth moved first into something almost unwilling, then into honesty.
"I must say... that boy is rather refreshing to watch."
She spoke with her gaze fixed on the sky, avoiding Akashi’s face as she searched for the rest of her words.
"I never thought... after becoming an Unus, he would be so different."
Her head tilted slightly as her mind wandered back to the day Akasha decided he would soon step into Pantheos — a vast, far more dangerous existence — instead of simply conquering the universe he started in.
The Minor Existence Akashi had created, truthfully, hadn’t been made with much effort; if it had, it would have stretched far beyond the scale of a typical universe.
From the beginning, it was never meant to be anything more than a farm, a playground for Akasha until the day he was ready to face what awaited him on his long journey.
When Akasha became a Lesser Unus, both Aethea and Akashi assumed he would blaze through, taking everything this Minor Existence could offer.
At that point, they believed, he would emerge as something unimaginable — to anyone but themselves.
And... This belief was rooted in the very nature of the Unus.
It had been said before that they were not merely among... but they were the most lustful beings to ever walk existence.
Yet their lust ran far deeper than physical pleasure; it was a hunger for everything to return to them.
All Unus, regardless of rank — Lesser, Greater, or otherwise — were the absolute origins of all that could ever exist.
By their nature, they ensured everything came back to them... by taking it.
It was this truth that made Aethea truly see Akasha in a new light.
She chuckled to herself before speaking again.
"The boy... he doesn’t want to take everything around him. He wants to expand what he already has."
She shook her head, glancing at Akashi.
"And... after watching your father’s antics over the eras, I think I needed this change of entertainment..."
Akashi rolled her eyes, though her smile lingered.
"Oh, shut it. He’s not some form of entertainment, and he’s not just different. He’s himself—and that’s exactly what will drive him beyond everything."
Aethea chuckled and let the subject shift toward the change already written across the sky above them.
Their gazes stayed lifted, and what the skies showed was not Akasha in his cocoon.
Surprisingly... It was a dual screen: Sunya moving through a world inside the Myriad Star System, braid neat, orange sigil on her wrist, and beside her the Supreme God of One Book in a chamber that did not belong to any ordinary sky.
"Well.... Will you allow your dear anchor to die?" Aethea asked, one feathered hint of a feature stirring as she weighed the question against whatever private ledger she kept for worthy blood.
Akashi shrugged, still curled, still watching.
"He will not die. And if he did, it would not matter. This minor existence means nothing to me."
----
The Supreme God of One Book sat in his chambers within the one Academic Pantheon in all of the Universe, a stronghold that did not rest between worlds or even between star systems, but outside a Star Cluster entirely.
It was an oddity that reflected not just the power of this pantheon, but also the immense authority they commanded.
As a Supreme God, for his safety and that of his pantheon, they should, by all rights, have been settled within the protection of an entire star system.
After all, Supreme leaders were typically rulers of such realms.
Yet, the Supreme God of One Book—he, in particular—was somehow more significant than perhaps any other being in the universe.
And currently, he occupied a desk that held, with a kind of dry irony, only one book, and he looked like a man in the middle of a crisis.
His short white hair darkened to black at the tips, scholarly robes cut clean and unshowy, the attire of someone who had decided long ago that spectacle was a waste of ink.
His fingers moved through the pages at an unhurried pace while he spoke to himself, not with weariness so much as with the tight patience of a man caught in a trick situation he had not finished mapping.
"How does the Orin Star System gain a ruler in the short time since I and the rest of the rulers left?"
It made no sense at all... as it hadn’t even been a full year since they left.
He still had an envoy in the world of Loreua, and there had been no mention of oddities, no urgent script, nothing in the reports that should have preceded a change of that size.
As he flipped, the book offered him live sight rather than old record, and through those pages he saw the new layout of the Orin Star System: six worlds and their suns arranged in orbit around Dream Land.
To him, without the ability to truly grasp the Domain’s nature, it was nothing more than six worlds orbiting an unremarkable mountain, but even that alone was enough to skew his calculations.
He dismissed the image as a decision took shape.
"I’ll send someone to check things out."
Then his attention shifted to the Accords, the two alliances that would disrupt everything he was trying to stabilize: the Accord of Assimilation on one side, the Celestial Accord on the other, each of them pulling at the same cloth he had been trying to keep from tearing.
He closed the book and leaned back, and the sigh that left him was heavy enough to sound like a man setting down a weight he could not yet name.
BaDump!!!!
However... the moment the cover touched the desk, his heart gave a single, thunderous beat—so loud it seemed to roll out of the chamber, through the Academic Pantheon, and far beyond, echoing across the entire universe like the strike of a massive drum.
His eyes went wide, and in that instant, the scholarly calm slipped from his face, leaving it bare and unguarded.
"No... an incursion?!"